Exclusive: Deepak Chopra Explores the Evolution of God

Deepak Chopra is the founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California, and is acknowledged as one of the master teachers of Eastern philosophy in the Western world. He has written over sixty books and has been a bestselling author for decades, with more than a dozen titles on the New York Times bestseller lists, including Buddha and Jesus. HIs books have been translated into over thirty-five languages. Time Magazine heralds Deepak Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century and credits him as "the poet-prophet of alternative medicine." His new documentary called "Decoding Deepak" will be released by SnagFilms and be in theaters on October 5th. In the film, Gotham Chopra embarks on a year long road trip with his father, Deepak, in an attempt to resolve the spiritual icon he is to the world vs. the real man known to his family. Follow him on Twitter @DeepakChopra to hear his daily thoughts.

His latest book is called God: A Story of Revelationand in this interview, I ask him why he dedicated his book to God, what he's learned about his own faith while writing the book, and more.

After Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus, what made you decide to dedicate this book to God?

I am always intrigued by the mystery of our existence, so I wanted to track the history of theological thought from the time of the Old Testament to Einstein. So the book covers the exploration of mystery, I would say, from Joeb, to Socrates, to St. Paul, to people like Giordano Bruno, to Anne Hutchinson in Massachusetts, the Jewish Rabbi who started Hassidism- the Ba'al Shem Tov, and finally Tagore, the Indian Nobel laureate, and Einstein and their conversation about science and religion.

So for me, it was very personal exploring this history and seeing where we are going. Right now the three biggest unanswered questions in science are what is the nature of the universe? Why is it their? How come we are aware of it? The mystery of existence is more of a mystery than the universe, it is the mystery of our own awareness as well. So it was an exercise for me and I thought I would share it, that's all.

What do you hope readers will take away from seeing this historic and elastic evolution of God in one book?

I think readers will hopefully, the serious readers, will see that God is our highest instinct to know ourselves. Even though we know a lot more than we did in the days of the Old Testament, the unknown has loomed much larger and there is the big unknowable because the laws of nature preclude us from knowing the laws of nature totally because even the laws of nature had a beginning. After 10^ -43 seconds, post Big Bang you see the laws of nature very precise and constant in the universe. Before that it was nothing and also, its unknowable because if their weren't any laws there wouldn't be any way to understand them. I think, for me, the religious feeling is the feeling of awe and mystery and surrender and I hope the readers will get that out of this.

How did the writing process impact your own faith and what lessons did you learn in writing your own book?

The biggest lesson I learned was that there is nothing we think of that wasn't thought of before. We refine slowly, very slowly, it takes thousands of years for some strategies to emerge, but you know what we think of the big dilemma and the big questions that we ask ourselves, from “Who are we?”, “Where did we come from?”, “Does God exist?”, “Do we have a soul?”, “What happens to us after we die?”. These questions have been asked before and in many ways answered with much more intelligence than we thought people had in historic times. If you studied the history of thought itself, the history of inquiry, it's mind boggling what people have questioned and the insights they have come up with.

You have written a lot of books and a lot of articles, what makes this piece different from the rest of your work?

This particular teaching combines east and west in a way I haven't done before in a spiritual book. It has everything from Plato's insights, into the life of Socrates, and Joeb in the Old Testament. It's a combination of spiritual inquiry, both east and west, in one place.

Where are the spiritual leaders and the profits of our modern age?

One age has taken away the reflective inquiry that was the domain of philosophers in the past. Today, science is the religion to which we try and understand reality and science is more about seeking perceptual validation through observation, through experiment theory. However, science sometimes loses insight, scientists lose insight to the fact that science is not a method for exploring ultimate truth, it is a method for exploring perceptual truth. In other words, what we see is not what is.

What we see is a reflection of our nervous system and our human method of questioning. Perceptual reality is different for different species. In certain species it is a mode of observation, so what we call scientific fact is actually not ultimate truth, it is perceptual experience and it's a mode of observation. But science has dethroned philosophy now because it is so successful. Science is so successful in it's application that we mistake the map for the territory and we do not even question the fact that science is exploring a map, but not the territory. Academic philosophers use scientific method and mathematics to do their philosophy. Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

I don't see any authentic, spiritual inquiry in the world right now other than “be nice to each other”, which is great, but all the spiritual and religious teachers are teaching us morality, which I think is important- we need to have a sense of modern values in order to go on living life so that we don't go on into the madness that is around us, from global warming, to gun violence and all the various prejudices that basically make a tribal mindset. Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal.

Right now the only spirituality we see out there is basically morality. It's not a deep investigation into the nature of our existence and I think when we stop doing that we lose a very important part of ourselves. We stop asking ourselves “Where is truth, goodness, beauty, harmony?”, “What is the meaning of evolution?”, “Why is there life and birth and death?”. These are important questions and we're not asking them right now. Not in the spiritual domain, anyway. Not even in the scientific domain.

Do you believe that faith should enter the workplace? Why or why not?

I think if it is important to the individual then they can bring it where ever they want, but I don't think the workplace is an area where we can impose that, nor can we deny that. It is a personal thing. I think we need to maintain the separation between the secular state and religion.

Do you think that faith brings people closer together in a down economy? Do you see people practicing their faith more now, as opposed to five years ago?

It's the kind of faith that I don't basically believe in or support in any way because it comes from fear. I think true faith has several components:

If you mean the act of faith by all of them then I am all for it. But if by faith you mean dogma, ideology, my religion versus your religion then we are in trouble.

Here is an exclusive preview of "Decoding Deepak":

Dan Schawbel is a Gen Y career expert and the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting company. He is also the #1 international bestselling author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future and was named to the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list in 2010. Subscribe to his Personal Branding Blog for more self-help advice.

I'm a partner and research director at Future Workplace, an executive development firm dedicated to rethinking and reimagining the workplace. I also wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Promote Yourself, and ...